Jason climbed the slanted ladder to their shelter backward, leaning against it for stability while he helped Gryf. The steps were slick with yellow lichen. Kylis chinned herself onto the platform. In their floor locker she had to paw through little stacks of Jason's crumbling ration bars before she found their mold poultice and the web box. She had been very hungry, but she had never eaten any of her friend's hoarded food. She would not have had such restraint a year ago.
Jason put Gryf down between the makeshift partitions that marked their section of the shelter. Gryf was pale beneath the pattern of tan and pigment. Kylis almost wished Troi and Chuzo had left him in the Pit. The Lizard might then have been forced to put him in the hospital.
She wondered if Troi or Chuzo might be helping the Lizard make Screwtop as hard on Gryf as they could. She did not want to believe that, but she did not want to believe Miria was an informer, either.
Their spider-- Kylis thought of it as a spider, though it was a Redsun-evolved creature-- skittered up the corner post to a new web. Kylis often imagined the little brown-mottled creature hanging above them on her tiny fringed feet, hating them. Yet she was free to crawl down the stilt and into the jungle, or to spin a glider and float away, and she never did. In dreams, Kylis envied her; awake, she named her Stupid. Kylis hoped the web box held enough silk to soothe Gryfs back.
'Hey,' Jason said, 'this stuff is ready.'
'Okay.' Kylis took the bowl of greenish mold paste. 'Gryf ?'
He glanced up. His eyelashes and eyebrows were black and blond, narrowly striped.
'Hang on, it might hurt.'
He nodded.
Jason held Gryfs hands while Kylis applied first the mold, then delicate strips of spider silk. Gryf did not move. Even now he had enough strength to put aside the pain.
When she was done, Jason stroked Gryfs forehead and gave him water. He did not want to eat, even broth, so they kissed him and sat near him, for his reassurance and their own, until he fell asleep. That did not take long. When he was breathing deeply, Jason got up and went to Kylis, carrying the bowl.
'I want to look at that cut.'
'Okay,' Kylis said, 'but don't use all the paste.'
The poultice burned coldly, and Jason's hands were cool on her skin. She sat with her forearms on her drawn-up knees, accepting the pain rather than ignoring it. When he had finished treating her, she took the bowl and daubed the mold on his cuts. She almost told Jason about Miria, but finally decided not to. Kylis had created the problem; she wanted to solve it herself if she could. And, she admitted, she was ashamed of her misjudgment. She could think of no explanation for Miria's actions that would absolve her.
Jason yawned widely.
'Give me your tag and go back to sleep,' Kylis said. Since she had been the first to get off work this time, it was her turn to collect their rations. She took Gryfs tag from his belt pouch and jumped from the edge of the platform to the ground.
Kylis approached the ration dispenser cautiously. On Redsun, violent criminals were sent to
rehabilitation centers, not to work camps. Kylis was glad of that, though she did not much like to remember the stories of obedient, blank-eyed people coming out of rehab.
Still, some prisoners were confident or foolish or desperate enough to try to overpower others and steal. At Screwtop it was safest to collect neither obligations nor hatreds. Vengeance was much too simple here. The underground society of spaceport rats had not been free of psychopaths; Kylis knew how to defend herself. Here she had never had to resort to more serious measures. If she did, the drill pit was a quick equalizer between a bully and a smaller person. Mistakes could be planned; machines sometimes malfunctioned.
The duty assignments were posted on the ration dispenser. Kylis read them and was astonished and overjoyed to find herself and her friends all on the same shift, the night shift. She hurried back to tell them the news, but Jason was sound asleep, and she did not have the heart to wake him. Gryf had gone.
Kylis threw the rations in the floor locker and sat on the edge of the platform. A scavenger insect crawled across the lumpy floor of fern stalks. Kylis caught it and let it go near Stupid, barricading it until the spider, stalking, left her new web and seized the insect, paralyzed it, wrapped it in silk to store it, and dragged it away. Kylis wondered if their spider ever slept, or if spiders even needed sleep. Then she stole the web. store it, and dragged it away. Kylis wondered if their spider ever slept, or if spiders even needed sleep. Then she stole the web.
She grew worried. She knew Gryf could take care of himself. He always did. He had probably never really reached his limits, but Gryf might overestimate even his strength and endurance. He had rested barely an hour.
Kylis fidgeted for a little while longer. Finally she slid down into the mud again.
Water seeped quickly into new footprints in the battered earth around the shelters; Gryf had left no trail that she could distinguish from the other marks in the clay. She went into the forest, with some knowledge and some intuition of where he might be. Above her, huge insects flitted past, barely brushing clawed wingtips against the ferns. It was dark, and the star path, streaked across the sky like the half-circular support of a globe, gave a dim yellow light through broken clouds.
Kylis was startled and frightened by a tickling of the short hair at the back of her neck. She flinched and turned. Gryf looked down at her, smiling, amused.
'Kylis, my friend, you really needn't worry about me all the time.' She was always surprised, when he spoke, to remember how pleasant and calming his voice was.
His eyes were dilated so the iris was only a narrow circle of light and dark striations.
Every few sets, someone died from sucking slime. It grew in the forest, in small patches like purplejellyfish. It was hallucinogenic, and it was poisonous. Kylis had argued with Gryf about his using it, before her sentence in the sensory deprivation chamber showed her what Screwtop was like for Gryf all the time.
'Gryf-- '
'Don't reproach me!'
'I won't,' Kylis said. 'Not anymore.'
Her response startled him only for a moment; that it startled him at all revealed how completely drained he really was. He nodded and put his arms around her.
'Now you know,' he said, with sympathy and understanding. 'How long did they make you stay in the box?'
'Eight days. That's what they said, anyway.'
He passed his hand across her hairjust touching it. 'My poor friend. It seems so much longer.'
'It doesn't matter. It's over for me.' She almost believed the hallucinations had stopped, but she wondered if she would ever be certain they would never return.
'Do you think the Lizard sentenced you because of me?'
'I don't know. I guess he'd use anything he could if he thought it'd work. Never mind. I'm all right.'
'I would have done what they want, but I could not. Can you believe I tried?'
'Do you think I wanted you to?' She touched his face, tracing bone structure with her fingers like someone blind. She could feel the difference between the blond and black hair in his striped eyebrows,
but the texture of his skin was smooth. She drew her fingers from his temples to the corners of his jaw, to the tendons of his neck and the tension-knotted muscles of his shoulders. 'No one should make friends here,' she said.
He smiled, closing his eyes, understanding her irony. 'We would lose our souls if we did not.'
He turned away abruptly and sat down on a large rock with his head between his knees, struggling against nausea. The new scars did not seem to hurt him. He breathed deeply for some time, then sat up slowly.
'How is Jason?'
'Fine. Recovered. You didn't have to take his shift. Lizard couldn't let him die like that.'
'I think the Lizard collects methods of death.'
Kylis remembered Miria with a quick shock of returning fear. 'Oh, gods, Gryf, what's the use of fighting them?'
Gryf drew her closer. 'The use is that you and Jason will not let them destroy you and I believe I am stronger than those who wish to keep me here, and justified in wishing to make my own mistakes rather than theirs.' He held out his hand, pale-swirled in the darkness. It was long and fine. Kylis reached out and rubbed it, his wrist, his
